New Delhi: The family of jailed former Uttar Pradesh legislator Mukhtar Ansari has approached the Supreme Court alleging that the state government run by chief minister Yogi Adityanath is planning to assassinate him in Banda jail where he is currently lodged.
In a writ petition filed under Article 32 of the constitution, Ansari’s younger son, Umar Ansari, has sought protection for his father from the apex court in the form of a transfer from the Banda jail. Mukhtar faces an “immediate and grave threat to his life and limb” in Uttar Pradesh, said Umar.
A five-time former MLA from Mau in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mukhtar has for long been under the radar of the Adityanath government, which after coming to power in 2017 unleashed the police and the force of the administration against him, his family, and supporters. While Mukhtar, despite his notoriety and a long list of criminal cases lodged against him over the years, continued to enjoy the image of a ‘Robin Hood’ politician who took on the feudal forces of Purvanchal. However, all that changed once the Bharatiya Janata Party stormed to power six years back.
Also read: Ex-MLA Mukhtar Ansari Gets 10 Years in Prison Over Murder of Congress Leader’s Brother
The state government designated Mukhtar a “gangster” and head of gang IS191 and lodged numerous criminal cases against him, his sons, including current MLA Abbas Ansari, his brother and former MP Afzal Ansari and other associates. The government has also seized, demolished, and freed from “illegal occupation” crores worth of property belonging to the Ansari family under the stringent Gangsters Act and eliminated several persons considered close to the former MLA in alleged shootouts.
‘Reliable information’ available of ‘assassination’ plot, says Ansari’s son
Petitioner Umar Ansari also expressed concern for his father’s well-being by drawing attention to the murder of former Lok Sabha MP and tainted politician Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf Ahmad on live television while they were being escorted by a team of policemen for a routine medical check-up in Prayagraj on April 15.
Atiq and Ashraf Ahmed moments before they were killed. Photo: Screengrab from video
Two weeks before the brothers were murdered by three mysterious assailants in the presence of police –who despite being in the line of fire for reasons known to them did not shoot the culprits in self-defence – the Supreme Court had dismissed Atiq’s plea seeking protection during his custody with the UP police in the Umesh Pal murder case.
Umesh Pal was a key witness in the murder case of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Raju Pal, in which the ex-MP and ex-MLA were accused.
In his petition, Mukhtar’s son, Umar, accused the Adityanath government of taking an “inimical position” against the former MLA and hatching a “larger conspiracy” to eliminate him while he is in jail. The threat perception is based on “reliable information” Mukhtar has received that his life is in grave danger and that there “is a conspiracy afoot involving several actors within the state establishment” to assassinate him in Banda jail.
Umar provides a graphic depiction of the way Mukhtar’s family fears he might be murdered. The same modus operandi had been used to carry out killings in jail in several other cases, he said. The petitioner said that a number of persons accused in the murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai in 2005 – Mukhtar was convicted and sentenced to 10 years earlier this year in a related case – had been killed by the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police in similar circumstances. Even though Mukhtar and other accused persons had been acquitted in the murder of Krishnanand Rai, they are still viewed as culprits and the BJP leaders in the state have time and again sworn vengeance against them from public platforms, said Umar.
The convicted politician’s son said that out of the persons accused of murdering Rai, four had already been murdered. While Firdaus was gunned down by the STF in 2006, Prem Prakash Singh alias Munna Bajrangi was murdered in Baghpat jail in 2018 by another convicted gangster Sunil Rathi. More than a week before his murder Bajrangi’s wife Seema Singh had in a press conference in Lucknow on June 29 that year alleged that the UP police along with some political leaders and officials were conspiring to get him eliminated outside the jail in a “fake encounter”. Singh had also claimed that during his stay in Jhansi jail, there had been an attempt to poison her husband.
Another aide of Mukhtar, Rakesh Pandey was shot dead by the police in an alleged “encounter” in August 2020 after the SUV he was purportedly travelling in along with four other persons crashed into a tree in the early hours of a Sunday morning. Pandey’s family had accused the police of picking him up from home in Lucknow and then killing him.
In June 2023, Sanjeev Maheshwari alias Jeeva, an alleged associate of Mukhtar, was shot dead inside a courtroom in Lucknow while he was being produced before the court. Jeeva had also been accused in the murder of BJP leader Brahm Dutt Dwivedi.
In his petition, Mukhtar’s son also accused the state government of covering up the murder of one Meraj, who had been a co-accused of Mukhtar in a MCOCA case, in which both were acquitted. In May 2021, an inmate of the Chitrakoot jail Anshu Dikshit allegedly shot dead Mukim Kala and Meraj with a firearm, inside the prison. Dikshit, who was lodged in a high-security barrack, was later shot dead by police after he allegedly held hostage five other inmates and threatened to kill them, according to the official version.
It must be noted that when the Samajwadi Party was in power in UP, the BJP as an Opposition party had alleged that Hindus in Kairana, in western UP, were being forced to leave their homes due to the fear of and intimidation by Mukim Kala’s alleged gang.
Earlier in 2021, Mukim Kala’s mother had approached the Allahabad high court seeking protection for him when he had been detained in Saharanpur jail. She alleged that the police were harassing Mukim by trying to put pressure on her to withdraw a complaint filed by her against the police after her younger son Wasim was killed in an alleged encounter in 2017. In March 2021, the HC noted that the response from the government did not show any harassment of her son but directed the state to see that no harm was caused to Kala and to conduct operations as per the jail manual.
Politics of ‘murders’
While public submissions by politicians and even accused criminals about threats to their lives are often taken with a pinch of salt, the frequency and brazenness of such murders over the past few years make it necessary to reproduce the details of the threat perceived by these individuals.
UP chief minister Adityanath at the Police Smriti Diwas event in Lucknow on October 21, 2023. Photo: X/@myogiadityanath
In his petition, Umar Ansari noted: “As per the information received from reliable sources within the police establishment, the persons who have been hired to assassinate the Petitioner’s father shall be arrested by the police or summoned on remand in some petty crime, produced before the court and then remanded to judicial custody. Then, they shall be taken to Banda Jail where the Petitioner’s father is currently lodged. This shall give the said persons the desired proximity to the Petitioner’s father. Thereafter, these hired killers will be provided access to arms inside jail and an opportunity by way of a lapse in security systems that they can take advantage of through complicit jail officials. The standard mode of operation is to give the attack the color of a fight between the inmates in order to give the entire incident the misleading cover of a ‘gang-war’ (sic).”
Also read: Since Adityanath Took Over in 2017, UP Police Have Killed 190 People in ‘Encounters’
Mukhtar faces more than 60 criminal cases and after the BJP came to power, he has been convicted in six cases. This included the life sentence awarded to him by a Varanasi court in June for the murder of Awadesh Rai, the brother of Congress state president Ajay Rai, and the 10 years imprisonment awarded to him for kidnapping a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader in connection with the murder of Krishnanand Rai in 2005.
Mukhtar was born in Ghazipur district in East UP, bordering Varanasi. His family was linked to the Congress and he grew up with a Communist legacy through his grandfather and father. In his political career, Mukhtar and his brother have been associated with both the SP and the BSP.
Ever since the BJP came to power in UP, the Adityanath government treated him as the mascot of criminal politics and went after him through criminal cases. However, this took a sharp turn in July 2020 when the Adityanath government was pushed to the backfoot after the Bikru incident in Kanpur where eight policemen were shot dead by history-sheeter Vikash Dubey and his associates. Dubey and several of his men were later shot dead by police in alleged encounters, with unsettled questions being raised over their genuineness. In terms of electoral politics, this was also a crisis for the BJP government vis-à-vis the influential Brahmin community. To placate them and divert attention from the Bikru massacre, the state government unleashed a wave of punitive measures against other controversial figures in state politics, most prominent among them Mukhtar, who by virtue of being a Muslim, fitted perfectly into the BJP’s polarising politics.